In the Haggadah, we read the following well-known passage: “R. Gamliel would say: Whoever has not made mention of these three things on Pesach has not fulfilled his obligation [to remember the Exodus]: Pesach, matza and maror.” These three things, therefore, are the fundamentals of Pesach, and merely reciting them without understanding their essence is insufficient.
The Haggada continues by explaining the three things. The first one is Pesach:
What is the reason for this Pesach [sacrifice], which our forefathers ate when the Beit HaMikdash was standing? It is because God “passed over” (pasach) our forefathers’ houses in Egypt, as it is written: “And you shall declare – this is the Pesach sacrifice to God who passed over the houses of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians but saved our houses.”
We thus conclude that the Pesach sacrifice commemorates the “passing over” in Egypt.
This miracle is difficult to understand. God’s passing over the houses seems to imply that He had originally intended to kill all Jewish firstborn children too! How could that be? Weren’t all the plagues intended to save the Jews? How could anyone imagine that Jews would be killed in the last plague?
After 200 years of life in Egypt, the Jews had sunk into “forty-nine gates of impurity (tuma),” until it was almost impossible to differentiate between Egyptians and Jews. According to the Kabbalists, had Bnei Yisrael remained in Egypt any longer, they would have sunk into the fiftieth gate, and it would no longer have been possible to redeem them.
This is exactly what Uzza, the angel of Egypt, protested in Heaven as the Red Sea was being split for the Jews while the Egyptians were drowning: “Both Egyptians and Jews are idol-worshipers…. Why do you discriminate by saving one nation and drowning the other?”
Similarly, the prophet Yechezkel describes the grievous failure of Bnei Yisrael: “They rebelled against Me and did not agree to listen to Me; no man would cast off his idols, nor forsake the gods of Egypt. I thought to pour out My wrath upon them, to annihilate them in My anger in the land of Egypt.”
Thus, the miracle of passing over the Jewish houses teaches us a momentous lesson. God chose us not for our righteousness – as our deeds were also wicked – but out of His love for us. In other words, He lovingly created a Jewish Nation with an eternal Jewish soul, which not even debased behavior can extinguish.
Passing over the Jewish houses, distinguishing between the Jewish and Egyptian firstborns – identical as they may have seemed in both appearance and behavior – is the greatest miracle of all, and the source of all other miracles which God in His mercy has performed for us.
This is why R. Gamliel, in his God-inspired wisdom, declared that one who has not made mention of the Pesach sacrifice has not fulfilled his obligation, for he has not understood the basic idea of the Exodus from Egypt – the love of Hashem for His Chosen Nation, the righteous and the less righteous together.
[Translated by Bracha Slai]